Hamilton led the British Grand Prix from pole position for the first seven laps last Sunday until suffering a tyre failure, and afterwards said
he felt he could have won.

Both Hamilton and Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn admitted on Friday that the Red Bulls looked stronger than the Mercedes when they did their race-simulation runs in second practice.

Hamilton said: "I think it's going to be very hard. The Red Bulls have obviously made a step this weekend. I think a lot of teams have made a step forwards.

"Webber said to me that these tyres seem to work really well on his car so I think perhaps they have had, who knows, potentially they have gained a better advantage than we have by switching tyres. His long run was very strong the other day."

Hamilton
set the pace in first practice
on Friday morning but struggled for pace in the second and third sessions, lagging half a second behind team-mate Nico Rosberg, before a set-up change on his car ahead of qualifying put him back in contention.

The team reverted Hamilton's mechanical set-up to where it had been on Friday morning but changed some of the electronic settings to new ones.

Hamilton said: "The car is obviously, as Nico has showed, great to drive. But trying to get a nice balance is not as easy.

"Nico has been here a long time and is used to the formalities and working with the engineers. For me I'm still finding it a little bit difficult to find my way.

"We were lost. We went from one end of the spectrum to the other and it went from huge understeer to huge oversteer.

"Usually if you don't have it right at the end of P3 you're stuffed. I really thought I was going to struggle to get into the top 10 with the balance I had. We made some big, big changes all round. I went fingers crossed into qualifying and the car felt great from the first lap, something I could really do something with."

He ended up beating Vettel by 0.103secs with the very last lap of qualifying.

Rosberg will start 11th after he failed to progress beyond the second knock-out session because the team underestimated how much other drivers would improve. The German dropped from second to 11th in the last four minutes of the session.

"It's tough, yeah," he said. "It's one of those days in sport that are really horrible so it's very difficult to digest."

Brawn said: "We were obviously very keen to keep two sets of [the faster] 'option' [tyres] for final qualifying, so we only wanted to use one set in Q2.

"To be honest, we thought the time was good enough. It was right at the end and we got caught out by the fact it got a lot quicker at the end of Q2.

"The wind dropped and the track seemed to pick up grip. The cars were going quite a lot quicker and by then we had no time to react.

"We were just biting our nails and we were just one place out, it was a misjudgement."

Comments

the list grows, lets see now;he wears earringshe has tattooshe bought a jethe is arroganthe lucked into mclaren (he didnt work for it)he had a famous gf he won a wcohh lets not forget even tho other ppl moan, his moan is just...and he speaks in that urban type of lingo dat puts man at end of wordswhat is this guy doing in our F1we cant have this

@253 davehyeh it s urban and you seem to have a problem with it! you and a few other posters hereAgain what was it in the way he reported the tyres issues he had that was so different from the others?the issue i have is u admit other ppl moan yet u single 1 person as the focus of ur bile..and now u are telling me there is levels of moaning nd LH is well how to put it, he transcended them

Yep, F1 had its Concorde era all it is doing now is recycling old designs and refining them. F1 is all about keeping the none motorsport fan happy most of the time. I always remember 89,90,91,92 because of the Honda V10, Ford HB, Ford DF, Ferrari V12, Judd V8, Renault V10, Lamborghini V12.Great era of sounds, driving, racing and a healthy sized grid.It felt like a competition back then.

@241 ooooh urban - faux americana is urban is it? I don't care how he articulates his issues He just needs to stop squeeling as thought he world owes him; he does himself a disservice as he is a quick driver but he's starting to develop emotional baggage.

@ 238 davehlet's see wat he actually said,;*these guys are on different tyres to me Man*is NR on the same tyre?which of these is all that bad? or do u object the urban way he expresses himself when talkin to his engineer?

At 212 Lee. You should be a politician because you're certainly most excellent at taking things out of context and spinning them. The guy was being interviewed, he was asked a question, how did you expect him to respond? Everyone at Mercedes naturally expects him to beat Nico, if they didn't then there would be parity in their salaries.

@237 the point about the moaning is that LH seems to be playing to the gallery when he broadcasts. He's overly emotive and doesn't appear to be clinically assessing the situation. I didn't say he was the worst of the worst but at the moment he's sounds like a boy in a mans world. He could do with some good PR

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